When I was 18, I sat down one day and planned out my life and then prayed for it to come true. Who I would marry, how many children we would have, where I would live, how my career would go: all sunshine and roses in the yard and writing, writing, writing… AND five boys… That’s what I wanted, five little boys. Scott and I were dating and he was my husband of choice. I vowed that our handful of handsome boys would grow to manhood knowing how to put the toilet seat down for their wives.

Of course, I had no idea at the time what raising five boys was all about. My older brother was my only sibling and he and his awesome friends took good care of me. Most of my school buddies were boys back then, and Scott quickly became my best friend when we began seeing each other my senior year of high school. I’d always been a daddy’s girl as well. Truth be told, I just liked boys. The opposite sex usually said what they meant and meant what they said. They played outside where the fun really happened, and I loved males’ strength and straightforwardness. Girls often hurt my feelings, but boys rarely did.

I was a fast runner in those days, didn’t mind having dirt in my hair, and for some reason the boys always liked me. Usually, I was the first girl picked to be on the boys’ team, and I was often included in their masculine inner circle when other girls got ostracized because they were girls.

So I admit I was disappointed when our first baby was a girl. But she was so cute and sweet that I quickly came to adore her.

When our second baby arrived, another girl, a powerful wave of disappointment washed over me. Yet only for a moment because our second daughter was born six weeks early and turned blue in my arms as she looked into my eyes for the first time. Her lungs collapsed and she nearly died after her birth. Because of God’s mercy, she survived and soon thrived and when we finally, gratefully, carried her home, my grandpa said, “Shoot, you brought home another #*@# girl.”

I felt like a failure that day for birthing only girls, but oh how I now loved that scrappy little girlie in my arms that I shielded from my gruff grandfather that summer day nearly 18 years ago as my other little wispy-haired daughter clung to my legs whenever Grandpa came into the room.

My grandpa died a few months after his second granddaughter’s birth. He never lived to see the grandsons that came along, the first, a handful of years later, and then three more in all their unabashed boyness. And yesterday our ultrasound revealed a fifth boy on the way, five boys just as I wanted way back when.

The evening before the ultrasound when we were holding family prayer night in the front yard around a cozy fire in our chiminea, our oldest boy walked to the edge of the grass and relieved himself. One after the other forming a line by age, his three little brothers joined him, even the two-year-old peeing up a storm.

I thought to myself, oh my goodness, I’m going to wear out my knees praying these boys to adulthood. Hopefully a sweet little girl who politely uses the bathroom is on the way. But as we prayed, the baby in my belly did somersaults. Just like a boy…

And from day one, I’ve felt we were having another boy. I even named him Cruz the day we discovered I was pregnant. It means cross in Spanish. Not that another little boy is my cross to bear; we were in Santa Cruz when we found out I was pregnant, and the cross is the most beautiful symbol on earth to me.

“God has a sense of humor,” a friend said to me today. “Another boy. Your life will be crazy for years to come.”

This is true. As I used the bathroom by myself today, quietly and cleanly like girls do, I looked down and there at my feet was a frightened, little frog.

“I understand your fear,” I told the little frog. “Those boys scare me too. They packed you into the house in their pocket. You probably escaped in the laundry and hopped in here to hide. I will take you outside now and set you free in the garden. Then I will go back in the house and look for lizards because they carry those in too and unlike cute little you, lizards give me the creeps. Snakes I refuse to think about in the house.”

After having a complete conversation today with the little frog, I realized that raising boys has changed me. I’ve really grown to like girls. Girls are clean and quiet and I never see them pee. They pack flowers into the house instead of critters, and wash their own faces. They paint their nails and I don’t have to sit on them with a pair of nail clippers and a pry bar to get the dirt out from under their cuticles as they howl like banshees.

Yesterday at the ultrasound when the tech posted the first photo of our new little man on the television screen, Scott walked into the room and did a double take. He’d been waiting outside because daddies don’t get to come into the ultrasound room until the exam is nearly over. I’d been holding off finding out the sex too because I wanted Scott to be there when the tech revealed the gender of the baby.

“Is that a picture from the other people’s ultrasound that were in here before us?” Scott asked with a priceless look on his face. The photo was a shot between the legs of little man’s masculinity.

“Nope. That’s yours,” said the tech.

Surprising myself, I squealed in delight. It had only taken God about twenty-five years to fully answer my crazy girlhood prayer of five boys. Now I’ll be talking to frogs until I’m sixty years old.

P.S. I just realized that I write about bathroom stuff a lot. Sorry about that. It’s my daily grind, cleaning up potty mishaps. Thank you for reading my blog. My prayer is that God speaks to you and we learn His lessons together.

Hugs,
Paula